I had always believed – as I had been taught – with great conviction, though perhaps foolishly, that Ethiopians were kind and generous to one another and even to foreign visitors. I certainly never, even in my wildest dreams, thought that Ethiopians could also be so hostile, so outrageously cruel and so humiliating to one another. Yes, even though I was one who occasionally accused Ethiopian political leaders and activists of recklessness and of leading weakly organized and dysfunctional organizations housed in shaky buildings constructed from cane and bamboo, with supporters who are lawless, scary militants, blindly following in the footsteps of their political leaders and of activists those who are not in peace with themselves and with each other, much to my astonishment and naïveté, however, I never envisioned that the sudden waves of optimism that came to light in 2005 might be replaced by additional shackles of hatred.
I honestly did not know that we Ethiopians could be so inhuman and so ready to obliterate those who refuse to be blind followers, who disagree with our self-centred and hidden ends and our feeble, vague organizations or political parties – political parties that have little or none of the necessary fundamental political structures, strategies, political maps and legal foundations. Nor did I know that we Ethiopians could be so terribly stubborn and jealous - unashamed liars who appear determined to trash and eliminate our own compatriots – not to maintain the territorial integrity of our country, to realize carefully planned socio-political and economic transformation, or to help educate Ethiopians about the terribly necessary modern political culture (a political culture that is entirely absent in the land we call Ethiopia and among the Ethiopian Diaspora community) or about the meaning and significance of democracy and accountability. Instead we do this for the most hazardous and frightening reasons – to support personal, family and group status and interests.
Isn’t this extremely frightening and depressing? What is most disturbing is that these cruel and shameless individuals call themselves “the gallant and true children of Ethiopia,” and do everything to convince us that they behave the way they do – engaging day in and day out in character assassination and false charges against known and unknown innocent individuals – because, they argue, they love their country, Ethiopia, enormously – more than anyone else. They also continue to insist that they are the ones who are capable of scaring Meles Zenawi’s regime, preventing them from handing over Ethiopia’s fertile land to Sudan and continuing the repression of our people at home. Maybe some of us just missed our old seat and want to regain it by complaining to the brink of self destruction.
More importantly and depressingly, however, the political events of May 2005 have magnified the long existing unhealed wounds and darkened the prospects for positive, relatively civil and respectful communication within the Ethiopian Diaspora community and Ethiopian society at large. Yes, even though most Ethiopian political activists and the unorganized interest groups would prefer to tell us otherwise – saying that the May 2005 election helped to expose the repressive nature of Meles Zenawi’s regime and weakened its political and economic position, both nationally and internationally – in fact in concrete terms, for the majority of Ethiopians both at home and abroad, the direct and indirect repercussions of the May 2005 election and the subsequent turmoil of the past four years have been costly, dreadful, tragic and full of disappointment and embarrassment.
Many in the Ethiopian Diaspora community came to regard it as either a leisure time activity or as a pastime of “see-ra-fe-to-ch/ bo-ze-ne-wo-ch,” those who have little or nothing else to do.
the reputation of being nothing more than “barking dogs that are unable to bite.” the most important factors and actors that have persistently, perhaps even permanently, prevented the Ethiopian Diaspora community from becoming a collective, harmonious force with a single face, a community that is both respected and proud of itself and its activities, and has kept it from playing a meaningful role that contributes to mending bridges among community members and to alleviating Ethiopia’s multiple, prolonged suffering.
We attempt to imitate the systems, political and democratic models of other nations, to implement them in our own land and incorporate them into our minds, but we fail to first understand and deal with the cardinal foundations and requirements of the many-sided components of democracy and democratic patterns and principles, and to consider and study their appropriateness to our situation, the openness of our culture and our socio-culturally molded attitudes and mindsets.
Not just to initiate new discourses and educate ourselves, but first of all to stress the urgent need to think and look critically, either individually or collectively, at the historical components that have shaped Ethiopian culture and molded our uncompromising, irreconcilable and sometimes vindictive attitudes and uncaring behaviours.
Through such engagement, after addressing the root causes of our inabilities to forge bonds, live and work together and find the remedies we need, and after inculcating concepts of respect, trust, confidence, accountability and shared responsibility for each other – combined with a mindset among the members of our society that includes a sense of belonging, a feeling of nationhood – we can achieve a basis for democracy and democratic systems to gradually take root in the land of Ethiopia.
There is an increasing difference within the community in terms of educational background and the extent of involvement in Ethiopian Diaspora politics. A more crucial element in relation to Diaspora politics, which I would like to see taken under consideration by the Ethiopian Diaspora community – especially if we are willing to make a serious attempt to forge bonds among ourselves, become a socially and politically influential community and play a meaningful role in helping ourselves and possibly also our country – is to issue calls underlining the urgent need for the establishment of a common, single House for the Ethiopian Diaspora, a professional institution, free from any direct or indirect influence from any political party, with visions and strategies, systems and rules – systems and rules that reward and obligate its members to serve, provide support and comply.
This would be an institution within which we can all educate ourselves; provide the means and the required material and educational tools to help in the development and expansion of civil society in our country; rebuild the badly needed trust, confidence and accountability among ourselves; engage in positive and constructive discourse and research about the many sided positive and negative cultural elements of our society; redress previous wrongdoing; and fashion new and helpful tools and strategies that will help to heal wounds, whether long existing or freshly inflicted, upon particular sections and generations of Ethiopian society.
Within such an institution we can produce acceptable, maturely written policies relevant to our contemporary political challenges and debates about the process of democratization, the development and role of civil society and the future face and direction of our country and its people, and we can rebuild the badly needed respect and love among ourselves. Such an institution is also needed to help maintain and expand our long-established positive cultural elements and use these to fashion a new political culture, extending our cultural patterns to include habits of working and living together with accountability and responsibility.
This will allow us not only to influence the forces and processes of future socio-economic and political changes in our country, both directly and indirectly, but to play an indispensable part, with a meaningful, positive, substantial role in helping and defending each member of our community in times of personal or collective difficulty, no matter how severe.
That’s the change we want!
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